Letter of the Patriarch to Albanian Students

More than Correspondence

>From the stalemate position in which resolution of the Kosovo
issue is at present, there is no way out, except to reject the
whole possessive nationalistic "we-you" discourse. And this
cannot be expected either from the Serbian Church or from the
biggest part of the Serbian and the Albanian political forces,
including the majority of the students on both sides. It is
preposterous to cherish high hopes in trashy-romantic theories
on "emancipated young generation" which will change the world,
because, it is allegedly, resistent to the catastrophic
prejudice of the elderly. Nationalistic perception of the
world, however, is self-reproduced and transferred from
generation to generation.

AIM Belgrade, 7 January, 1997

The letter of the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox
Church (SPC) to the Albanian students in Kosovo who are
demanding that they be enabled to return to the premises of
the University in Pristina, revealed to those who wish to see
much about the stands and intentions both of the sender and
those who it was addressed to. There is no doubt that all the
participants in this correspondence tried to make their words
sound tolerant and reasonable, but this did not eliminate from
their "discourse" elements which aggravate or even prevent
intelligable communication. The Patriarch evidently sincerely
reproached repressive behavior of the Serbian police to Kosovo
students - it is difficult to even imagine a different
principled reaction of a Christian believer and priest - but
he nevertheless warned the students that it was not clear how
they imagined to return to the state university of a state
they did not recognize. The state concerned is called the
Republic of Serbia.

In their reply, the Albanian students of Kosovo say
that the University in Pristina was founded by a decision of
the authorities of the province - which is supposed to imply
that it was constructed solely by the money from Kosovo,
without the money from the solidarity fund and similar
mechanisms existing at the time in SFRY... - and that in 1991
Serbia occupied the Kosovo university like the entire Kosovo.
In other words, as the Albanian students explicitly say, the
University in Pristina does belong to the state, but that
state is called the Republic of Kosovo...

Almost all the relevant political forces on both sides
of the Serbian-Albanian "wall of misunderstanding" commented
the correspondence between Patriarch Pavle and the students.
Differences in their assessments and conclusions are present
to the extent to which their political commitments and views
of the "national issue" differ, as the traditionally popular
entertainment of the Balkan nations and their "excessively
populistic" intelligentsia. Serbian politicians and
distinguished intellectuals insist on respect of territorial
integrity of Serbia as a precondition for the indispensable
talks on the rights of the Kosovo Albanians. The Albanian
politicians and social protagonists, on the other hand, refuse
to settle down to mere criticism of police repression, and
even to the principled stance against "apartheid" in Kosovo
(the stance which is taken by civic and liberal forces in
Serbia), but believe that it is necessary to negotiate about
the "status of Kosovo". The only reply they wish to take into
consideration is formal, legal and actual secession of Kosovo
from Serbia, and probably the FRY. Even in phases. This shows
that what we actually have in Kosovo can be defined - despite
mutual honeymouthedness - as a conflict of possessive
nationalistic discourses.

The only true question for all the protagonists is,
therefore: whose is Kosovo? Since it is impossible to give an
answer to this question which would satisfy both parties, the
present insupportable situation is maintained in Kosovo. All
the attempts to express good will and "appeals to common
sense" (which somehow always and primarily mean calling to
reason of the others) are swinging in vacuum of the unobliging
"democratic rhetoric".

It is useful to be reminded of the prewar situation in
Croatia and B&H: all the parties over there also referred to
reason, tolerance and democracy, and then to their
"inalienable historical rights", seeing no contradiction in
this confusion of liberal and collectivisti rhetoric. All the
three leading national forces in B&H - SDA, SDS, HDZ - contain
the qualifier "democratic" in their names. All this
"democracy", however, could not have prevented them from
getting enthusiastically involved in a brutal war against
unprotected civilian population of the other religions. The
motive was again "clarification" concerning the exclusive
right to control a certain territory. The result of such
"ethnic engineering" awkwardly veiled by oaths of allegiance
to democracy, is known only too well.

Bajram Kosumi, vice-president of the Parliamentary
Party of Kosovo, pronounced what everybody thinks but mostly
pretend not to know it: "The largest part of the letter deals
with instructions of Patriarch Pavle to our students to
recognize the Serbian state, and this is the contradiction I
have mentioned. This is the stand promoted by the official
Serbian policy, which does not wish to face the essence of the
problem. The essence is not in police repression and return to
the University, but in who will control Kosovo, whether it
will be the people who live here or the Serbian regime from
Belgrade.

Politics, as an activity directly opposed to normal
human lives, is capable of producing situations from which
there is simply no reasonable way out. Accumulation of "the
most expensive words" and possessive nationalistic rhetoric
charged with an excess of negative emotions leads to a status
of total blockade in which the protagonists are holding each
other by the throat, unable to make a single movement which
would set them free.

Such a policy "wants it now and wants it all". That is
why it turns out that it is impossible to leave large national
historical issues aside and simply resolve problems of normal
human living, such as the right to study or employment. For
normal academic life political commitments should not be
important, but neither will the Serbs recognitze the right of
the Albanians to return to the University without a specific
"declaration on loyalty to the Serbian state" - which they
will never see - nor will the Albanians be willing to give up
treating Pristina Univiersity as the official educational
institution of the unrecognized meta-state of the republic of
Kosovo.

There is no way out of this stalemate position of the
"war of symbols", except by rejection of the entire possessive
nationalistic "we-you discourse". And this cannot be expected
either from the Serbian Church or the majority of the Serbian
and Albanian political forces, including most of the students
on both sides. It is preposterous to cherish high hopes in the
trashy romantic theories about an "emancipated young
generation" which will change the world because, allegedly, it
is resistent to the catastrophic prejudice of the elderly.
Nationalistic view of the world is self-reproduced and
transferred from one generation to the other. The difference
lies only in the fact that the elderly wore different caps,
while the young all wear earrings. If we recognize "sincerity
and authenticity" as a political category, it turns out that
in the treatment of the Kosovo problem - with the "students'
issue" as the tip of the iceberg - language of sincerity and
authenticity was used only by rare true liberals and more
numerous true radicals. Those who did not shrink from complete
rejection of the possessive nationaliostic discourse, or to
adopt it completely, and in this way without any reservations
reduce all controversies to the very fundamental one which is
the source of all others: who is the master of Kosovo?

All the others - including both parties in the latest
correspondence and the largest part of the interested
on-lookers - are keeping their fingers crossed in their
pockets. Not necessarily because thy would intentionally tell
lies, but because they are not capable of overcoming
controversies of the language they use. True problems which
will result from it remain to be seen.